


And dance by the light of the moon

by Aja



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur's life is so hard, BAMF Eames, Dom Cobb Being an Asshole, Fireworks, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, One-Sided Attraction, Partnership, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Road Trips, See Rock City, Sexual Tension, angstception, eamesception, how much do i love that 'dom cobb being an asshole' was already an autofill tag, this is a very hard fic to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 06:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4091059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels Eames’ gaze sink into him. If they kissed now, Arthur thinks, he’d be giving him exactly what he wanted. </p><p>He thinks about doing it anyway and then hates himself. “I didn’t really think therapy sex was your style,” he says.</p><p>Eames’ lip curls up. “Oh, but I bet you’re used to being the exception, aren’t you, sweetheart?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	And dance by the light of the moon

**Author's Note:**

> There’s a scene in [this most excellent fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/220516) by aprettyaway where Arthur tells Eames about the Mal torture when they’re working the Inception job. There’s definitely a homage to that moment going on here at one point.

"I got you a Christmas present," Eames says, dumping the battered package in Arthur's lap.

Arthur looks down at it. It's wrapped in plain red wrapping, creased on the sides as if Eames got frustrated with folding the corners. It looks like it's been through a lot.

"It's St. Patrick’s Day," is all Arthur says. It comes out sharp, like an accusation: like _where the fuck have you been?_

 

*

Arthur doesn’t take Eames seriously as a colleague until he has to. For one thing, he hates the concept of colleagues in a criminal underworld where you can’t trust anyone; for another, he knows how much his lack of respect pisses Eames off, and that’s just fun.

The moment he has to grudgingly admit Eames is worth his salt comes without any bullets being fired in or out of the dreamscape, or any of the usual aspects of the job. In Singapore, Eames works an easy but involved extraction with Arthur and Cobb. It's after Mal, but before Mal starts showing up in Cobb's head, so things are generally subdued but drama-free. 

Halfway through, the client checks in and convinces Cobb to take her under. Cobb, in a decision Eames will ever after be annoyed by, agrees and allows her to, as he puts it, take a tour of dreamspace. She's markedly underwhelmed, in Arthur's opinion, by the site of landscapes that look identical to reality. He knows he shouldn't blame her since her lack of awe is, in a way, a compliment; it just means they've done their job well, built dreamscapes you can't recognize as dreamlike. But it also underscores the nagging feeling he's always carried with him that what they do is a huge misstep, a waste of dreamshare's potential. Dreams, at essence, should be about exploration and adventure, not about enacting complex replicas of boring real-life spaces in order to trick people. 

Working with Eames has always tended to bolster this niggling dissatisfaction, which is one reason Arthur doesn't do it that often. But on this occasion his irritation gets a boost, because the client may think Arthur's minimalist hotel lobbies are boring, but when she gets a load of what Eames can do, her whole attitude changes. On the spot, she decides she wants Eames to train her in the art of forgery as a side job. Eames says yes, but only if she agrees to spend fully half of the time they have left above-ground learning the basics of the practice before they go under. 

To his credit, Eames schedules his lessons after they technically lay off for the day, so he won't bother Arthur (the only one who would be bothered). So Arthur manages to find reasons, every day, to linger and observe. At first he's motivated purely by pique, he supposes, but that's rapidly replaced with genuine interest. 

Over the first half of the final six weeks they’re on the job together, Arthur watches Eames walk the client through the process of forgery. To Arthur's frank astonishment Eames spends the first week just going over the theoretical principles that go into the practice. It’s a highly detailed combination of artistry and acting that Arthur has honestly never thought twice about before this. Shape-shifting is easy, apparently; the hard part is shapeshifting as someone else, holding the image and demeanor of another human inside of yourself. The really, really hard part is trying to convincingly pull off an imitation of someone when all you have to go on is a photograph. Arthur is fascinated; he can’t help but be. Eames, as it turns out, hates working from photos, and holds that all photography is as ephemeral and unreliable a beacon of reality as his own visage when he's under. And Arthur reckons he of all people should know. 

In the end, after two weeks down under attempting unsuccessfully to forge the image of her sister, the client throws her hands up and doubles Eames’ salary. 

Every day he works that job, Arthur fights the urge to invite Eames back down under for a practice run, just the two of them—just to, for lack of a better word, _play._

He thinks about it after the job, too. Eames doesn’t let many things or people hold his attention for very long, he knows this. It’s one thing that keeps him in demand—he gives people just a taste of what he can do and then he clears out. Arthur’s probably not the first person who’s wanted to get Eames alone in a dreamscape with no pressure and time on the clock to run.

But Arthur is one of the first people who, he thinks, has ever had a chance at getting Eames to say yes.

In the end, that’s probably why Arthur never actually makes the offer. It wouldn’t be good for Eames to think of himself as in-demand.

Well, that, and the fact that Cobb wouldn’t like it.

 

* 

Arthur kisses Cobb once. Just once, after Cobb fails an extraction and goes under with more Somnacin in his veins than Arthur has ever seen anyone take in one dose. After he's been asleep for over an hour, Arthur goes down after him—of course he does—having no idea what to expect. He steps out of a rickety elevator onto a beach that stretches for miles. No one around, not even seagulls, just endless sky and ocean, and Cobb’s family building sand castles in the middle of it all.

Cobb goes stormy and closed-off when he sees Arthur; he works his fists open and shut like he’s reminding himself that he’s still a family man, and family men don’t punch their friends and associates in the face. Arthur says nothing, just shakes his head once and frowns until Cobb kisses Mal (not Mal) on the forehead and extricates himself from the arms of his dream children.

It’s not until they’re both back in the elevator that it really hits Arthur, what he’s just seen. It’s so unexpected that he mutters, “Christ, Dom,” before he can stop himself. “Three projections. All straight from your memory. How long have you been building this place?”

“The beach is a construct, it’s not based on a real place,” Cobb says, holding out a hand, the way he does when he’s trying to placate an irate client or someone pointing a gun at him, and fuck that.

“Fuck that,” Arthur says, and suddenly he’s furious. “Don’t lie,” he says. “I know a memory when I see one. How long have you been coming down here?” He bats Cobb’s hand away and shoves him. Cobb’s back hits the wall of the elevator and makes it rattle, but it stays motionless. It doesn’t have another floor to go to, and Arthur spares a moment through his anger to be grateful that Cobb’s addiction hasn’t extended to multiple layers. If he only has one layer going, if he’s just coming down here to lay on the beach, then maybe things aren’t as bad as Arthur first thought.

He glances back at the elevator panel. It only has one button, a single one in the middle. But it has room for more.

“How long?” he asks again.

“It’s not what you think,” Cobb says. “I just use it to help me relax, that’s all—”

“Bullshit,” says Arthur. “Your naps have been getting longer and longer. Do you even know how long you were out today? Are you even measuring the dosage or are you just filling up and taking a hit?”

Cobb’s jaw clenches. “Stop talking to me like I’m a junkie, all right, Arthur?” he says, wincing in a way that manages to look more like an accusation than hurt. Arthur rolls his eyes. “You know as well as I do that after what happened with Mal, I’d never—”

“Oh, yeah? What exactly did happen with Mal?” Arthur snaps. “You ever gonna tell me?” Cobb looks at the wall. “I can’t help you,” Arthur seethes, “if you don’t tell me what happened, Dom. You can’t just expect me to keep trusting you blindly when you’re throwing away everything like this.”

Cobb grimaces and sends him a look that says, clearer than anything, Oh, yes, I can, and it’s the last straw. Arthur has a hand on his chest, pressing him up against the wall, half-ready to punch him, half-ready to drag him awake through sheer force of will.

Instead he snarls and leans in and sinks his teeth into Cobb’s lower lip. Cobb goes slack all over, and Arthur pries his lips open and pins him against the wall, kissing him until Cobb tightens his arms around Arthur’s waist. Cobb’s mouth tastes like the ocean, like memories of Mal and every mistake Arthur’s ever let Cobb convince him to make. Cobb gasps and shoves their hips together, his cock hard and thick against Arthur’s, and Arthur thinks he could come just like this, frotting in his suit, exactly like he’d done once as a teenager at someone’s grandmother’s awkward commencement party. He feels floaty and euphoric like he always does when he gets hard in dreams—

—and this, the sense that he is far too happy, is what finally snaps him back to his senses.

He rests his hands on Cobb’s lapels. “You’re not going to distract me,” he murmurs against Cobb’s mouth.

“You started it,” says Cobb, half-smirking.

“So wake up,” says Arthur, pulling back, “and let me finish it.”

He takes a breath, collects himself.

Waits for Cobb to say yes.

 

*

 

Six months or so before Inception, Eames meets Arthur for drinks in the Algonquin. He’s passing through, which is usually Eames-speak for a neat bit of money-laundering, something he is very good at, especially on the East Coast. Arthur’s been doing a security detail for a friend. They’ve texted a few times, called each other twice, and somehow Arthur winds up in the hotel bar with a sharp twist in his gut over how normal it all feels. 

This is what other people do; they get together with friends, meet up for drinks, go out and laugh over tumblers of scotch and don’t think about what they’re going to do with the half-million dollar bonus that landed in their bank account after their last job.

Eames shows up wearing a plaid wool blazer in a shade of burgundy and grey that turns his eyes the color of sandstone. By the time Arthur has realized he’s noticed, the twist in his gut has turned into a low simmer of heat. 

Eames strokes his thumb over Arthur’s wrist when they shake hands. He orders bourbon and makes a point of stirring it, looking at it, not Arthur, when he says, “You’re not working with Cobb on this one?” Then, before Arthur can respond, he adds, “Oh, of course, how silly of me,” in a dry tone that makes it clear he knows full well the reason Arthur is here alone is that Cobb can’t get back into the states. “What did he send you back for, then?”

Arthur lets his lip curl over his glass. He doesn’t answer. Cobb hadn’t sent him, but he had begged Arthur to take presents to Philippa and James. Arthur had said no. He’d stopped by Miles’ house in Los Angeles anyway, just to confirm Miles’ refusal to let him in the door.

He sets his glass down definitively on the counter and makes a motion to get up. Eames stops him with a broad hand on his shoulder, heavy but not insistent. “Don’t go,” he says. “That was rude of me. And I haven’t even thanked you yet.”

Arthur isn’t in the mood for playing whatever game Eames thinks he’s running today, but Eames’ voice is light, and the way he’s not quite meeting Arthur’s gaze feels a little like a victory. He shifts and settles back onto the bar stool. Eames shoots him a grin and raises his glass as though nothing tense had passed between them, and Arthur lets himself unwind, just a little.

“I spoke to Yvonne about the Nairobi job you ran a few months back,” Eames says. “I have to say, Arthur, I was a bit hurt at first that you didn’t have room for a fourth given I was right in the neighborhood and all.” He takes a swig of his drink and rolls his shoulders, looking utterly relaxed in a way that Arthur knows by now to be wary of. “But then when she spoke about the conditions down under...” He trails off and shoots a glance over at Arthur. “I rather thought maybe there was a reason you left me out of it,” he says.

Arthur knows he hasn’t said anything since “Hi,” knows he’s being an ass, but he’s not going to talk about this. He should have known Eames would be an asshole about Cobb given the opportunity. Jesus.

Then, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was for my own protection,” Eames says. 

Arthur looks at him, then, a flat, steady gaze. It helps that he’s clutching the tumbler with one hand and the other hand is snug in his pocket. If his hands are trembling, Eames can’t tell.

“But you know better,” he says flatly.

Eames sends him a brief, sardonic smile. “I know Cobb can’t afford to have someone like me refusing to work with him again,” he says. “Best we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to make a hash of things, yeah?”

“If you say so,” says Arthur.

And Eames says, “You’re better than pining over a dead man, Arthur.”

Anybody else, Arthur would punch them. Instead he lets his gaze go shuttered a little and huffs out a laugh. Eames leans over and watches him, his eyes sharp. “All I’m saying is,” he says, looking far too earnest for a man who’s picked five pockets since he’s walked into the hotel, “You know you’re better than this. You know you could have your share of men who won’t drag you down with them.”

“Jesus christ,” says Arthur, “I can’t tell if you’re hitting on me or trying to give me an intervention.” Eames blinks a few times, as if he’s honestly thrown. “Forget it,” says Arthur, rolling his eyes.

“Could be both, if you like,” says Eames, his voice remarkably steady considering how he’s leaning on the bar. “Nothing quite so cathartic as fantastic sex.” He raises his glass, toasts Arthur, and drinks. “Although I’d like to think in normal circumstances it would take more than a few tawdry come-ons to get you into bed.”

Arthur turns away from the bar and faces him then, feeling the heat in his own gaze translate to the way Eames’ eyes flash. “Maybe that’s all it takes when I actually like the guy,” he says. 

“Oh, please, Arthur,” says Eames, baring his teeth. “We both know you like me just fine.”

Arthur wants to press him against the bar and hold him there until Eames gives in, until he drops the cool facade and moans Arthur’s name against his lips. He wants to touch Eames, coax him to climax and then leave him, just fucking get up and walk away. He wants Eames to feel bereft everywhere Arthur’s fingers have touched him. He wants Eames to go to hell.

He downs the rest of his drink and laughs, a low, ugly laugh. When he sets it down on the bar again, Eames is still looking at him, his eyelids thick, his gaze dark. He thinks, not for the first time, that Eames was made to be a lush. With his broad shoulders and plump lips, his easy acquaintance with bar stools around the world, he could live on sexual favors and never have to risk skirting the law, much less finding himself an internationally wanted criminal. Eames never acts as though he loves dreamshare, never seems as though he thinks working a job with a PASIV is anything more than an annoying inconvenience. Arthur is starting to know better.

He feels Eames’ gaze sink into him. If they kissed now, Arthur thinks, he’d be giving him exactly what he wanted. 

He thinks about doing it anyway and then hates himself. “I didn’t really think therapy sex was your style,” he says.

Eames’ lip curls up. “Oh, but I bet you’re used to being the exception, aren’t you, sweetheart?” 

His collar is loose, and Arthur’s eyes keep drifting to the thick, muscular tendons of his neckline. He’s always known Eames is attractive. None of this is new. 

“I know this concept is anathema to your sense of existential angst, Arthur,” Eames says, “but it could just be a bit of fun. An afternoon of no strings, no pressure. Whatever you want.” He motions airily toward the hotel elevator bank.

A part of Arthur wants to laugh at how surreal it is to be negotiating casual sex with Eames, of all people, who could just as easily go take his pick of men and women and leave Arthur out of it. 

Another part of him is thinking about it. Whatever he wants sounds like a pretty good deal. Whatever he wants sounds like a lot.

He already knows they’d have fun. He can see the way Eames would be in bed, continuously talking, drawling and sloppy and unspooling laughter from Arthur in spite of himself. He can see himself running his hands over Eames’ taut skin, drawing his nails over the muscles of his abdomen, teaching Eames to beg for whatever Arthur wanted him to want. 

It could be fun. Maybe even better than fun. And then when Arthur got up and walked away... 

Arthur tips his head back. He’s relieved to realize that he’s honestly not that much of an asshole, not yet, at least. 

Maybe he still wants to go under with Eames, just the two of them—toss them both into a dreamscape and sharpen himself against Eames’ edges, or maybe even just let himself burn away around Eames’ flame. But he can’t ask that now, not with sex on offer.

He stands and collects his coat. Eames spreads his hands flat on the counter and snorts. Arthur starts digging through his wallet, but Eames waves him aside and says, “Oh, no, I won’t _hear_ of it,” and lays a twenty on top of Arthur’s glass.

“You’re such an asshole,” Arthur says, and Eames shoots him a thin smile and says, “I learn from the best, don’t I.” He swirls what’s left of the bourbon and then looks back at Arthur, his eyes serious. “If I may switch back to the intervention for a moment?”

“Could I stop you?” says Arthur as he pulls on his coat. 

“Arthur,” Eames says. His voice is gentle, and Arthur is already turning away because he knows what’s coming and he hates the thought of looking at Eames while Eames says: 

“Cobb ruins everything he touches. Don’t let him ruin you, too.”

 

*

 

What Cobb says, instead of “yes,” is:

“Wait.”

If Cobb were anyone else, Arthur knows he’d have seen through it right away; he’d have known Cobb wasn’t ready to wake up, was already in over his head. Deep down, Arthur always _has_ known, but by the time he realizes it’s too late, he’s worked up a long track record of believing Cobb when Cobb asks him to believe impossible things. 

He believed Cobb when Cobb told him dreamsharing was possible. He believed Cobb when Cobb told him he could pioneer neurophysical field research, that together the three of them, he, Mal, and Arthur, would win a Nobel. 

He believed Cobb when Cobb swore bringing the PASIV home on weekends was just for additional study. He believed Cobb when Cobb said they had gotten a special license to keep a second PASIV at home, that the one at the school was already obsolete tech for their purposes. 

He believed Cobb when he swore on the souls of his own kids that Mal had been the one to push them too far. 

And he believed Cobb when he swore he had no idea why Mal jumped.

Because Arthur has spent so much time believing in Cobb, because Arthur really is that young, when Cobb cups his cheek, looks into Arthur’s eyes, and says, “Just give me a few more months to sort all this out, okay, Arthur?” Arthur believes him.

And Arthur waits.

A few more months stretch into twelve months, stretch into eighteen months, stretch into _holy shit, we’re doing Inception_ , and then at the precipice, Eames is there, Eames with his lewd grins and his infuriating grand plans and his habit of tickling the back of Arthur’s neck with a pencil when Arthur is trying to work, and Arthur catches himself flirting back sometimes, even though it’s ridiculous, even though everything, _everything_ is riding on this job—Cobb’s happiness, Arthur’s freedom, his whole life, everything. 

Arthur is packing up the warehouse one night as Cobb is finishing up going over their contracts. Apart from the initial recruiting and brainstorming phase, Cobb hasn’t actually had a lot of input on the job itself because he refuses to have anything to do with learning the dream layouts. That means he’s had no hand in planning logistics beyond general suggestions. Eames, Arthur, and Yusuf have all pow-wowed with Ariadne on their own to coordinate their sections of the dream. Mostly Cobb has seemed content to act as a benevolent overseer whose main responsibility is keeping Saito happy. Arthur knows he should be more worried about this than he is, but mostly he’s just happy for the strange sense of pressure release it’s given him, for once.

Cobb takes him to a Thai place nearby, and then says over appetisers, “So. Eames.” He looks at Arthur expectantly.

Arthur looks up at him, confused by the way Cobb is looking at him with a strange, knowing smile. It takes him a moment. “Jesus,” he says when he gets it. “No.”

“You two seem...” when Arthur doesn’t fill in any blanks for him, Cobb tries out, “friendly.”

Arthur stares at him. He waits for something more to come from Cobb. He has a sudden sinking suspicion that he knows where this is going, and it’s such a cliche that he can’t quite believe it until Cobb takes a sip of water and says blithely, “I think it’s good, really. Eames is a little eccentric, but I think the two of you could be good for each other.”

Arthur feels his face slowly heating up. “And you’d be just fine with that,” he says after a moment, “If I started fucking Eames. If I ran off with Eames to Kenya or somewhere and left you high and dry on your own.”

Cobb’s forehead furrows in concern. “Arthur, you know that I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. For Philippa and James. But this job is going to work, and if it doesn’t—I keep telling you, you need to be happy.”

“Actually, you told me to wait,” says Arthur, folding his napkin and pushing his chair back. Cobb doesn’t say anything. If anything he looks confused. For the first time, Arthur wonders if he even remembers saying it, if maybe he’s pushed the whole moment in his fucking dream elevator so far to the back of his mind along with all the other shit he left down there in his tormented subconscious that he doesn’t even remember Arthur sliding their lips together, doesn’t remember wedging his thigh in between Arthur’s and biting Arthur’s lower lip. 

It’s as if Arthur turns a corner in his own mind, as if he unfolds a paradox stair and finally ascends to the next level. All at once, he sees himself, and Cobb, the way other people see them; he can see Cobb’s increasing desperation and selfishness, and for once there’s no mitigating circumstance to drive away the pain of it. He can see exactly how Cobb must look to other people, distracted and lost in his own ego. He thinks of all the times he’s tried to get Cobb to stop going under, all the times Cobbs has brushed him off, all the times Arthur has told himself that it’s grief and not arrogance, loss and not denial, not a refusal to accept responsibility. He thinks of Mal having herself certified sane. Of Mal threatening Arthur with knives if he came closer, screaming that she knew he wasn’t real, that he wasn’t _her_ Arthur. 

He thinks of Mal throwing herself out a window on her anniversary. 

He thinks, really, for the first time: _What did you do to her?_

He stands, feeling dizzy on his feet. Cobb is looking at him in utter blankness. Arthur can’t speak, can’t think. So he leaves.

Arthur doesn’t honestly remember going back to the hotel. He doesn’t really even know where he is until Eames is opening the door of his hotel room, clad in a t-shirt and track pants, hair still wet from a shower. He takes one look at Arthur and pulls him in by the arm, shutting the door behind him. Arthur doesn’t know what he’s doing or why he’s there, but he has a vague memory of hearing himself pound on the door until Eames opened up. When Eames pulls him into the room he doesn’t protest.

“Arthur?” 

Arthur presses into him, reaches up and draws Eames’ mouth down. His lips are chapped but still plump, smooth where Eames parts for him on a surprised huff of cool air. He tastes like shower soap and aftershave, and Arthur leans in closer. His lips are buzzing, and if he opens his eyes he’ll see Cobb’s blank, confused face staring up at him, and he wants—wants—

Eames breaks away, his eyes wide and dark. He leaves his hands on Arthur’s shoulders and slowly takes a step back. “Arthur,” Eames says. “What happened?”

“I don’t know what he did to her,” Arthur says. “What he—I don’t know, I don’t know _him._ ”

Eames lets out a breath between his teeth. “Did he say something to you? Did he hurt you?”

Arthur gets as far as, “He said we—we were—” and stops. It sounds so childish, to say it, to put it out on the open: _I think he was just using me, this whole time, I don’t think he ever—_

Arthur knows what he’s feeling is the jarring sensation of having his worldview finally righted. He knows on some level that for all it hurts now, at some point later on, he’ll be grateful he finally got his head out of his ass. But right now all he can think is that it was never Mal’s ghost who’d knifed him, shot him, gutted him all those times—it was really all just Cobb.

“Arthur,” Eames says. His voice is low with concern. It sinks into Arthur, and he presses a hand to his forehead. 

“You don’t know why he’s been keeping himself out of the design,” he says. “Fuck. Fuck. I think—” He gathers himself. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know why I came here.”

“Shh,” Eames says. “Sit down.” He tugs Arthur over to the couch and Arthur spares a moment to be grateful for hotel suites with soft sofas and spare blankets like the one Eames wraps around his shoulders. It’s silly and unnecessary but Arthur leans into it anyway. Eames sits down next to him and Arthur tries hard not to lean into him, too.

“Why doesn’t Cobb want to know the dream layouts, Arthur?” Eames’ voice is even but his gaze is hard on Arthur’s face. 

Arthur rubs his forehead. “He’s got a rogue projection,” he says. “It’s been sabotaging the dreams. I thought Yvonne told you after Nairobi. I thought you knew.”

Eames shakes his head. “Yvonne said Cobb only went under on practice runs with you, wouldn’t let her down there at all until the last trial run. She said his projections swarmed all over you.”

“She wouldn’t have recognized Mal,” Arthur says.

“Mal,” Eames says. “Cobb’s projecting his dead wife? What does she do? What does she do to you, Arthur?”

“She—she tortures me,” Arthur says. “Over and over.”

“Fuck,” says Eames. “Christ.”

“It’s been happening for months and it keeps getting worse. He goes under when he thinks I’m not around, he’s—he’s got a whole fucking _world_ he’s built down there with projections of her and the kids.” Eames swears again and looks away. He balls his hands into fists, opening and closing them. 

“I’ve tried to get him to stop,” Arthur says, realizing for the first time how pathetic he sounds. He’s supposed to be sharper than this. He’s risked all of their lives, and for what? So Cobb would get his head out of his ass and fuck him?

“We have to call it off,” he says.

“Like fuck we are,” says Eames. His voice has gone stony. 

“We can’t risk it,” Arthur says. “Not when we know the team lead is unstable.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do, Arthur, but we’re in this up to our necks,” Eames says. “We know he’s been trying to control it, we know he doesn’t know the layouts, we have a full week downstairs on the first level so we’ll have time to spot any cracks in the facade if anything goes wrong.”

“Yeah, and by then it could be _too late_ ,” Arthur seethes. He’s aware that he’s venting, allowing himself to be angry at Eames because this is familiar, this is safe—the two of them arguing over job planning together is a world away from contemplating the possibility that he’s just thrown the last two years of his life away on a man who doesn’t give a fuck about him and never did, a man who may have been responsible for the death of Arthur’s best friend. 

He feels his throat closing up. “We can’t,” he says again. “Not when we’re three feet away from the mark in an enclosed aircraft for ten hours of real time. Christ, not with Ariadne involved, too. ”

Eames’ face is a study in contrasts, disbelief warring with concern and hostility. “Ariadne’s not going under. As soon as we get on the plane she’s home free. You don’t have to worry about her. What you do have to worry about is pissing off Saito _and_ still having a price on your head from Cobol. Don’t give me that look. Am I seriously the only one who’s considering that this job is about three international energy competitors, all of whom are warring with each other and more than happy to take out any one of us if we get in the way?”

“If we fuck up the job, then it won’t really matter how many of them are after us, will it?” says Arthur. “We call it off now and get the hell out while we can.”

“No,” says Eames, and his smile is utterly disdainful. “If we call off the job, the rest of us will get the hell out while you’ll be stuck dealing with Saito and Fischer _and_ Cobol, all at once, because Cobb will have a target on his back bigger than this city, and you’ll be collateral.” 

He reaches out and cups Arthur’s chin in his big hand, runs his thumb over Arthur’s throbbing temple. Arthur huffs and returns the gesture, wrapping his hand around the thick muscles at Eames’ shoulder. He wonders if he’d said yes to Eames back in New York if they could have been fucking this whole time. He knows it’s a stupid thing to think about—he knows he would have gotten up and walked out when it was over. He thinks if he hadn’t, Eames would have, because Eames likes to keep things clean, simple. 

He sighs, tugs Eames towards him. Eames goes and kisses him, once, twice, unsteady, before giving up and just going for it. Eames kisses him like Arthur always wants to be kissed—the kind of full, open-mouthed heat that leaves him tingling all over, as though Eames has never kissed anyone before and can’t help sinking into the sensation of it now. He thumbs Arthur’s jaw line, works his fingertips over Arthur’s lips and chin and cheek as they kiss, tugging Arthur’s head back until he finds the right angle to kiss him even better. He strokes his tongue over Arthur’s, catches Arthur’s bottom lip between his own, sucks and teases his mouth until Arthur’s gasping and lightheaded, rock hard in his trousers. Eames murmurs, “We have to run the job, Arthur, it’s your only way out,” and before Arthur can respond to that, Eames is pulling him up and leading him into the bedroom.

He strips Arthur with agonizing slowness, letting Arthur basically paw at him until he thinks to yank his own clothes off. They frot against each other like teenagers, rough and fast and good, Eames holding Arthur down and murmuring dirty endearments into his jaw line in-between kisses, Arthur letting himself touch and cling and hold onto what he wants.

He comes gasping Eames’ name as Eames grinds their cocks together, biting Arthur’s shoulder blade and gripping his hip possessively. He sucks Eames off after that, unable to help the embarrassing noises he makes when Eames’ fingers dig into his scalp. Eames comes down Arthur’s throat and then keeps fucking his mouth for a few more moments while Arthur swallows, circling Arthur’s lips with his come. Arthur’s so turned on he thinks he could get hard again just from this, just from Eames holding him in place on the bed and making him take it. 

Instead Eames pulls Arthur up to meet him and kisses him, long and intimate, until he’s got Arthur pressed against the pillows and Arthur is panting softly against his mouth, erection already stirring again against Eames’ thigh. 

Eames looks amazing like this, sweaty and swollen-lipped and rock solid above him, and Arthur thinks about how he could have had this so much sooner if he hadn’t been such an idiot. He blurts out, “You know, Cobb thought we were already fucking.” 

A moment or two later, once he’s had time to register the look that comes over Eames’ face, it hits him that probably wasn’t the smartest thing he could have said. He sits up. “I didn’t mean—” he starts. Eames is already sitting back, moving away from him.

“Did you come here to spite Cobb, Arthur?” he says. Moments before, whispering promises against Arthur’s neck, he’d been breathless, almost drunk. Now he just sounds tired and resigned. Arthur doesn’t know what to say. Arthur doesn’t remember deciding to come here.

Eames runs a hand over his face. “You should go,” he says.

Arthur reaches for Eames, grabs his arm. “That’s not why I came,” he says. 

Eames nods, looks away. “I know,” he said. “You came because you were upset.”

Arthur thinks back to that day in the bar, how he’d discarded the idea of sleeping with Eames because he knew himself, knew he was still hung up on Cobb. Christ, what a mess. He waits a moment more for Eames to say something, but Eames is still looking at the wall, so finally Arthur starts awkwardly scrounging for the clothes Eames divested him of earlier. Eames hands him his tie when he’s mostly dressed. Arthur takes it and keeps hold of Eames’ hand for a moment.

“Thanks,” he says, knowing it makes him sound like an asshole, knowing he _is_ the asshole he thought he hadn’t become yet.

“Get some rest, Arthur,” Eames says, granting him a brief, unfamiliar smile. “Inception awaits.”

 

*

Inception happens. Through no thanks to Cobb. Cobb who pulls Ariadne onto the plane at the last minute without discussing it with Arthur or explaining why to any of them. Cobb who screams at Arthur like he's the reason the job has gone to hell. Cobb who fucked with the only guiding principle of dreamshare (when you die you wake up, when you die, you _wake up_ ) without a word to anyone. Cobb who has lied, and lied, and lied, and then has the balls to act like Arthur is the one who screwed them all. 

At the moment Cobb tells them what he’s done, how he’s sabotaged them, sabotaged _Arthur_ , all Arthur can think of is this: that Eames had tried to warn him months ago.

When he looks back at Eames, Eames is looking back at him.

 _I’m sorry_ , Arthur tries to communicate.

And Eames says—

“Darling.”

 

* 

After the Fischer job, Arthur spends two months back in the states remembering how awkward he always is around his family, then another couple of weeks remembering how awkward he always is around Cobb and his kids. 

He takes a couple of easy jobs—safe, quick in-and-outs that give him a chance to play around with dreamscape design. 

He finds that the extractors he works with generally stand back and let him design whatever dreamscape he wants, which is a notable change from the years he’s spent working under Cobb’s management. He knows word has gotten around that he was part of the team that pulled off Inception, and at first he thinks that’s why they let him do whatever he likes. But as it keeps happening, the more he starts realizing that Cobb may have been more of a control freak than Arthur ever realized. 

He’s aware that’s probably Eames rubbing off on him, which is doubly ironic since Eames hasn’t worked with Arthur since Cobb returned to his kids. In fact, as far as Arthur can tell, Eames hasn’t been working with anyone.

In moments when Arthur is feeling supremely self-indulgent, he can admit to himself that he’s annoyed about this. A small part of him had hoped that Eames would step up after Inception and do one or two jobs as an extractor, just to try it out—with Arthur as his point, naturally. Arthur’s annoyed because Eames is squandering all the buzz they’ve got from the Fischer job on vacations and gambling and robbing old ladies in resort hotels. It’s the kind of petty thievery and confidence scamming he usually does just to keep his hand in—not what he should be focusing on now that he’s the highest-paid forger in the business, and the only one with Saito’s ear.

Arthur doesn’t like admitting he feels adrift without someone to report to in-between jobs, but he does. He doesn’t like admitting he’s waiting for Eames’ call the way he used to wait for Cobb to get his head out of his ass. Arthur wouldn’t say he hasn’t had fun doing easy, simple one-levels, but deep down, he’s aware that he’s biding his time. He waits as he takes Cobb’s kids to the park on the weekends, as he passes Ariadne his vetted contact list, as he texts Eames the latest Celebrity Apprentice gossip, because Eames is addicted to reality tv despite never managing to stay in any place with a working tv set. But the call about the job never happens. 

Arthur steadfastly refuses to believe it’s because of that night. Eames had brushed it off like it was nothing. They’d been fine, almost companionable, for the rest of the job.

Arthur had been so sure Eames was going to text him a hotel address on his way out of LAX he’d kept his phone on a couple of hours after he should have burned it. 

Eames does call him, twice, but neither call is job-related. The first time he calls to ask Arthur whether Columbia was a major or a minor film studio in the 30’s.

“Are you actually calling me from a pub quiz?” Arthur snaps.

“But of course,” says Eames, fondness coming through clearly even through the din. “I’d google, but I’ve fat fingers, and we’re allowed one phone-a-friend.”

“It was a major-minor,” says Arthur, trying not to sound too happy to hear from him, trying to quell the conflux of embarrassment and chagrin and pleasure at being casually referred to as a friend, despite most likely being the only contact Eames even has in his mobile. Despite everything. 

“Technically it’s a major but not one of the Big Five,” he says. “I’m pleased to see you’re enjoying your retirement, by the way.”

“Oh, never retired, Arthur,” Eames laughs before hanging up. “At least, never for a life of pub quizzes.”

The second time he calls, it’s early December, and Arthur is driving back to Santa Barbara from a weekend spent mostly doing last-minute Christmas-shopping with the Cobbs in L.A. Eames has been doing a job in Tadjourah. He calls Arthur up just as Arthur is finally leaving Ventura Highway. “I am lying on Khor Ambado beach,” he says, “and wondering how you are.”

“You’re lying on the beach at two in the morning.”

“No better time for it. Peaceful, deserted, few mosquitoes. You’re on the 101. I can tell by the universal sounds of teeth-grinding in the air.”

“Wrong as usual, Mr. Eames,” Arthur lies, pulling off onto a beach overlook just because he can. There’s something pleasant about it—the idea of the two of them sitting staring out at the ocean on opposite sides of the world. He puts the car in park, settles back in the seat. 

“Ah,” says Eames, as if he knows exactly what Arthur’s doing. “Well, you wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if you ever proved me right, would you.”

“So,” says Arthur, bypassing the flirting because his cheeks are already burning. “Djibouti? You’re practically working from home.”

“And I hear you’re taking it easy these days, too. Nothing fancy, everything low-key.”

“I’ve taken more work than you have,” Arthur says, more sharply than he’d like.

“Hmm,” says Eames. “If you can call one-level jobs work.”

“Cobb and the kids are still getting back on their feet,” Arthur says, wondering how Eames can automatically send him into defense mode even when he’s trying to be pleasant.

“Right, of course,” says Eames, and there’s the bite in his voice Arthur was missing. “And you’re so fond of California.”

“What the fuck do you want, Eames?”

“You know,” says Eames, as if Arthur hasn’t spoken, “You should come out to Kenya soon, let me show you the beaches there.”

“Eames, I’ve been to Kenya,” says Arthur. He says it quite practically, he thinks, given the sudden swooping of his stomach.

“But you’ve never been to _my_ part of Kenya,” says Eames. “Might be fun.”

Arthur thinks about it. He thinks about Eames’ phone-a-friend from the month before, and reflexively clenches the steering wheel. He doesn’t have to stay here trailing after Cobb and his increasingly mind-numbing domestic routine. He doesn’t owe Cobb shit, especially not after the way the Fischer job went down. 

He could go visit Eames. 

They could sit on the beach, just like this, the two of them, drinking beer and getting stoned. He could take the PASIV and they could finally build mazes together, spend a week planning dreamscapes they’d never need to use for jobs they’d never pull. Eames could laugh at Arthur’s pitiful attempts at forgeries, and Arthur could pick holes in all his bullshit theories of dreamsharing until Eames was annoyed enough to let go of all his fucks and come up with some totally brilliant batshit theory that Arthur could actually run with and start implementing—some new use of Somnacin or method of projection manipulation, maybe something even more amazing than inception. 

And at night Eames would waltz Arthur through every bar in Mombasa and make him get drunker than Arthur would ever admit to, and tease him about being uptight, and Arthur wouldn’t even get pissed about it. And.

And they could see what happens.

It takes him a moment of taking it all in before he realizes the significance of Eames’ word choice. That word again: _fun._ It sounds simple enough—no strings, no pressure—but they both know it’s not ever quite that simple.

Still. Eames is making the offer. Again.

“So tell me about it,” he says, and lets Eames talk, lets Eames’ voice lull him like the surf.

It’s not until Eames says, “After this I’m off to Réunion for a drop-off, and then after that you should swing by,” that Arthur realizes he’s already thinking about it as a foregone conclusion. 

“How long’s the job in Réunion?” he asks.

“Week. Ten days, maximum, provided my fence shows up on schedule. Hard part’s already done, I took care of that in Baku just before Sidney.”

Arthur grins. “I wondered if that job was you,” he says. Sixteen security guards, two floors, and someone had managed to walk out with a small-but-priceless Rubens stashed under their coat. An hour before anyone realized. This, _this_ is why he misses working with Eames. This is why he knows they could be the best. They could be so much better than the best.

“ _That_ job is always me, Arthur,” says Eames, and Arthur can hear him grinning back. 

Arthur closes his eyes for a second, and just thinks: _Eames_.

He thinks: 

_I’ll ask him. I’ll go to Mombasa, we’ll spend a week or two just seeing where things take us, and then I’ll ask him to partner with me._

_And he’ll say yes._

“Well, then, Mr. Eames,” he says. “How about two weeks from now? I hear Christmas in Mombasa is lovely.”

There’s a moment of what Arthur will register later as shocked surprise on Eames’ side of the call. He tries to listen for the sound of the ocean on the other end, but all he hears is the sharp intake of Eames’ breath and the passing cars on his own highway.

“Two weeks,” Eames says. “Pack light.”

 

*

When Arthur misses Eames in Mombasa, he heads straight to Saint-Denis and kicks in every door for information he can get his hands on. He traces Eames to Petite-Ile, to the Hotel Palm, where he’d been registered until just four days before Arthur’s arrival. His fence showed up, a competent hoofer Arthur’s done business with once or twice. The money exchanged hands along with the painting—Eames has kept his heists before, but he’s not really a fan of Baroque art, and there’s nothing to indicate he’d kept the Rubens to himself. 

Arthur can trace every bit of the money to Eames’ various bank accounts. So there’s no drama there. But from Eames’ hotel checkout every lead Arthur manages to scrounge up leads nowhere. No one knows anything, no one’s seen him. 

It’s like he just fell in the ocean. Like he never left the island.

Arthur feels like the wind has been knocked out of him. Like he can barely breathe.

*

Arthur knows Eames’ career history well, but now he digs in. He researches years’ worth of double-and-triple-crosses, trying to pinpoint anyone who could have put out a hit or gotten the drop on him, only to find out, rather to his surprise, that Eames leaves very few loose ends, professionally. Despite the gambling habit he keeps his ledger of debts owed and repaid firmly in the black. Whatever this is, it isn’t something long dead and buried. It’s something new, something unexpected.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Cobb asks him after Arthur mentions he’s been in touch with Saito. (If Arthur needs to drag every harbor in Réunion, he’ll do it. If it comes to that.)

“What, like you wouldn’t call him if it was me who went off the map?” It’s easier to let himself be snide when Cobb is on the other side of the world.

“You know how Eames is,” Cobb says. “He’s probably just on a gambling binge somewhere.”

“That’s not how he operates,” Arthur snaps. “He was meeting me in Mombasa, he wouldn’t stand me up.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes,” Arthur says. 

Cobb huffs out a breath. “Look, I just don’t want to see you get hurt,” he says.

Arthur bites the inside of his cheek until he can speak. “Get it through your head that you don’t have a monopoly on my help,” he says, and hangs up the phone.

 

*

 

Two months pass.

He spends six weeks looking. He spends another week just trying to make himself stop looking, and then three more doing—well. Doing normal things, he guesses. Jobs, when they come up. The easy jobs, the one he used to take because he was waiting on Eames to call.

He works, and lives his life, and doesn’t think: 

_I should have gone to him sooner. I should have asked him to partner with me. I should have asked him every day, until he said yes._

 

*

 

Cobb calls when Arthur is finishing up a job in St. Louis.. “The kids are asking when you’ll be back,” he says.

“Tell Philippa I’ll be back for her third-grade graduation,” Arthur says. He sounds so domesticated that for a moment he hates himself.

“Not before?” Cobb asks.

“Why, what do you need?” Arthur asks, automatically—and then the silence that stretches out before Cobb answers tells him what he wants to know before Cobb speaks.

“I didn’t—nothing, Arthur, we’re fine,” he says. “Jesus. We’re fine, we don’t need anything. Kids are doing great. Thank you for—for asking.”

“Sure, any time,” Arthur says, because as long as Cobb’s kids are involved, it’s just the truth.

If Cobb suspects there’s any rancor in Arthur’s voice, he doesn’t comment on it. 

 

*

From St. Louis, Arthur books a consulting job in Georgia that gives him time to swing home for a few days.

Tennessee cotton country never changes, and Arthur’s mom never stops working in her garden, especially not now that Arthur’s set her up with an early retirement. He parks the rental and joins her there, bends in the dirt and works beside her for a while without a word. “You’ll ruin your nice suit,” she says.

“For a worthy cause,” he shrugs, and she gives him that familiar sharp look, the kind that says she doesn’t want to know what kind of life he leads if it’s the kind that renders a two-thousand dollar suit disposable. He averts his eyes and plants a begonia. He can’t help trailing his fingers in the dirt, poking and prodding out of long habit, to see what’s there.

A heavy silence settles between them. He tries out and discards any number of personal life updates he could try to give her, the ones that all end with a hopeless, halting eulogy for a man she never met. But she can clearly read the tension of his shoulders, and Arthur can see the moment she decides against telling him that whatever it is will be all right.

After a while, she stands and brushes the dirt off her pants. “Come on inside,” she says. “I must have known you were coming, ‘cause last night I made sweet potato pie.”

 

*

 

The drive from Memphis to Chattanooga is as mind-numbing as it ever was: nothing but miles of yellowed grass, sparse pastureland, and interstate. Plenty of time to think of all the ways Arthur couldn’t save Eames from whatever fate he met in the Indian Ocean. 

The worst part of the drive isn’t the low speed limit or the obnoxious Southern drivers. It’s the goddamn Rock City barns. 

He drives past so many obnoxious signs telling him to SEE ROCK CITY that he starts to think that maybe, for once, he should just give in and fucking SEE ROCK CITY already. He starts to think, hell, that many dilapidated barn roofs couldn’t be wrong about a tourist site called ROCK CITY, and the job doesn’t start until Tuesday, and it doesn’t really mean much either way, because Eames is probably dead and Arthur will never have _fun_ like that again, the way he’d had during the Fischer job, the way they’d had in Antwerp or on the double-cross in Suriname, because through it all Eames had been too busy aggravating him and egging him on for Arthur to register his own terror, and no one else in this business will ever be that for him again because frankly no one else is stupid or _good_ enough to keep their mind off their own terror, much less Arthur’s mind, because Arthur is highly focused, Arthur is meticulous.

Except that Eames had thought Arthur was ridiculous and lost and in need of an intervention. And maybe Arthur is, just a little, because Arthur is taking the exit off I-24 for Lookout Mountain, Arthur is going to SEE ROCK CITY, so fuck Eames and his plush mouth and his broad hands and the way his voice halted when he buried his face into the curve of Arthur’s neck. Fuck Arthur’s asshole life and fuck the damn barns.

It’s not mourning, Arthur tells himself, if you haven’t yet buried what you lost.

 

*

 

The motel clerk doesn’t even double-take at Arthur’s nice suit and shiny briefcase. Arthur requests a no-smoking room on the ground floor north corner—not so much so he can avoid smoke so much as flee the premises faster if he needs to. It’s not likely—these days most people seem to think Arthur’s got grateful friends in high places, which is probably the truth, given that Arthur had found Saito’s business card tucked in the outer flap of his carry-on when he landed at LAX. But it can’t hurt.

He stashes the PASIV and settles in. He’s supposed to go SEE ROCK CITY now—that is, after all, why he pulled off the interstate—but there’s enough of a busy hum of activity from tourists coming and going outside to make him decide to pull the curtains shut and watch tv and play Skyrim instead.

He turns on his laptop for the first time since he left Brownsville and changes into shorts. He’s just sprawled onto the mattress when the Wi-Fi connects and abruptly six different trace alerts pop up in succession on his desktop. 

It feels like all the air leaves Arthur’s body at once.

His hands are shaking as he clicks on the pop-ups, one after another. The first is a trace on the Palm, Eames’ hotel in Réunion. It matches a cross-trace on a credit card belonging to Eames’ third-favorite alias, which takes care of alerts two and three. 

Alerts four and five are on two of Eames’ bank accounts, and the sixth is a trace on a different credit card, different alias, indicating a flight path from Saint-Denis to De Gaulle to Dallas to Greeneville, landing at roughly 10 am that morning, seven hours ago, and holy shit. 

Holy shit.

Arthur sits back on the bed and says, “That son of a bitch,” and just like that, there’s a fucking knock on his fucking motel door.

Heart beating nearly out of his chest, he fumbles for his totem. Rolls it around in his palm, grasping at the weight of it in his hand, tossing it onto his laptop keyboard and snatching it up when it lands on one, over and over again.

The knock comes again, a little more faintly, hesitant, and Arthur forces his trembling legs off the bed and opens the door.

All Arthur can do is look at him, at his shabby jeans and his thrift-store shirt, his beard rough-hewn and scraggly and uneven, as if he’s gone months between shaves. The circles under his eyes are craggy, just like you’d expect someone to look if they turned up on your doorstep straight off a nineteen-hour flight and a drive over the mountains. 

He looks awful and dirty and ragged and _alive_ , and Arthur has never wanted to hold anyone so much in his entire life.

Eames is halfway through a sheepish smile of greeting before he registers whatever Arthur’s face is doing. He says, “Arthur,” immediately, voice infused with affection and apology and concern and care and a hundred things Arthur can’t fucking cope with right now.

“You stood me up,” Arthur says, and he feels his legs go out a split-second after they actually do. 

He doesn’t so much stumble as topple sideways against the doorframe, and Eames drops his bags and steps forward, reaching out like as if he’s afraid Arthur might ttopple over. They stand like that while Arthur figures out how to move again—Arthur leaning heavily against the door, staring warily at Eames, Eames’ eyes wide open and vulnerable.

“Arthur,” he murmurs. “Arthur, christ, I’m so sorry.” As if he’s the one who’s been in not-mourning, as if he’s the one who’s had to deal with this crushing weight inside of him every moment since he fell into the goddamn ocean.

Eames looks as if he wants to reach up, cup Arthur’s face in his hands. Arthur wants him to, but if he tried it Arthur thinks he might punch him. He shoves himself off the doorframe eventually and stands aside to let Eames in. Eames blinks a few times but enters. He’s got a tiny duffel bag that he sits beside the tv and a battered package he carries lightly in his hands, and he’s alive.

Arthur is supposed to be the one who can find anyone, the ultimate researcher. He’d looked for Eames using every available resource at his disposal—every GPS tracker, every transaction trace on every alias Eames had ever used, and even a few Arthur suspected were only aliases of aliases, every favor he’d never called in, to people he’d’ve preferred to live several lifetimes without contacting—and all for nothing.

Instead he’s gotten so sloppy that Eames could vanish for three months without a trace and then track Arthur to a goddamn Econo-Lodge in half a day.

Arthur sits on the bed. He’s still trembling. Eames’ face is lined, and Arthur can read regret written all over it, but he’s smiling when he dumps the package in Arthur’s lap. He walks over to the minifridge and nabs one of the few beers Arthur grabbed on the way in. Arthur’s sitting on the edge of his unmade bed with this battered package between his legs. 

The address on the package just says “To Arthur” in Eames’ giant unwieldy handwriting. Eames has perfect handwriting when he’s imitating someone else. Arthur knows this. It’s not like Eames can’t write in even, legible rows that don’t slide all over the place. He just won’t. Arthur’s knee shakes where it balances the package. He should burn it. Throw it out onto the highway. Make Eames choke on whatever’s inside it.

Eames says, “Do you want a glass?” He sounds jovial enough, but his voice is clipped. Arthur’s grateful for a moment that he hasn’t attached a tacky endearment, and then he’s even more furious that he’s grateful.

“I looked for you,” he blurts out. His voice is flatter than usual, and Eames stops swirling his glass and holds still, looking at the wall instead of at Arthur. 

“I know,” Eames says. His voice is light, wary. “And I appreciate it.”

“How did you even get stateside, I thought that alias didn’t have credentials—” he breaks off. Eames has been known to pull jobs for lifts on passport restrictions instead of money, the kind of access he can’t get any other way. But the idea that Eames dropped out of sight all this time just for a job makes Arthur’s stomach clench. He couldn’t have. Not just for a job, for something mercenary and totally fucking unnecessary. Not when Arthur could have gotten him whatever access he needed if he’d only asked. Not without letting Arthur know he was okay.

If Eames knows how Arthur’s thoughts are tending, he doesn’t show it, but he drains his glass in one long swallow, all the same. Arthur thinks of the sheer quantity of times when the only way he’s known what Eames is thinking is by watching him handle a glass of alcohol.

“Flew into Greenville,” Eames says, tone indicating that he’s aware Arthur knows this already. “Local airport. And Southerners do _so_ love my accent. Traced your rental and got a satellite line from Chattanooga. I see you were unable to resist Rock City.” He turns at last and gives Arthur a false grin.

“I do like rocks,” says Arthur. Arthur fucking hates rocks.

“You would be drawn to something more stone-faced than you are,” says Eames. He smiles again, close-mouthed and uncertain this time.

Where the fuck were you? Arthur wants to ask. He doesn’t want to have to ask.

“Dewa said she didn’t need specialists on this job,” he says.

“Ah, Ngurah,” says Eames. “How is she these days?”

“Pissed at you.”

“Splendid.” Eames’ duffel bag is lying on the tv console where he dropped it. He reaches for it now, digs out a packet of cigarettes. “Uttered in those dulcet tones, one might think she wasn’t alone.”

Arthur says nothing. Eames glances over, the same forlorn smile flickering on his face. He looks at the wrapped package in Arthur’s lap, then away again.

“I’m not doing this job with you,” Arthur says when Eames’ cigarette is burnt almost down to the filter. Arthur remembers he had requested a no-smoking unit but doesn’t bother to spell it out for Eames, who paces around and then stubs it out in the bathroom sink.

“Didn’t say I was here for the job,” says Eames softly.

Arthur looks down at the package in his lap. It’s bulky but not heavy. It rattles when he shifts his weight.

When Eames comes out of the bathroom again he opens the closet door and pulls out the fold-up cot without a word. Arthur watches him set it up, watches him try to figure out how to angle it in the cramped space of Arthur’s single unit. He’s a little more gaunt since the last time Arthur saw him, but not unhealthy. He’s no more tan than usual, not like he ought to be if he were off vacationing instead of working. 

Arthur wants to ask. Doesn’t want to have to ask.

Eventually Eames sets the cot up against the radiator next to the window. He’s whistling something beneath his breath, not so much an audible tune as a concerted puffing of air Arthur can vaguely recognize as rhythm. Arthur unfolds himself, leans back flat on the bed with the package still balanced on his legs. The bed’s rumpled and the pillow is a hard lump beneath his spine. He closes his eyes and listens. Gradually the pattern of huffs in Eames’ raspy cadence resolve themselves into a melody of sorts. It’s a song Arthur recognizes but doesn’t know. Something vintage, a Tin Pan Alley number, maybe. If he tries hard enough he can pick up the tune and identify it later. He doesn’t really want to try.

Eames breaks off mid-huff and says, too casually, “I’m very, truly sorry I stood you up, Arthur. But don’t you think if I’d been in any position to tell you where I was, I’d also have been in a position to get away before now?” He sits down on the bare cot mattress. The springs creak and he keeps his weight off it, balancing gingerly on the edge. He looks at Arthur in side glances, nothing direct.

“So, what, you’re saying you were stranded on a remote desert island for three months?” says Arthur, too sharply, too angrily for what he feels. “Are we going to have visitors?” Eames does look at him then.

“Arthur,” he says. “When have I ever brought trouble to your doorstep?”

 _You could have_ , Arthur thinks. _I’d’ve helped you, back when I thought you trusted me._

It must show on his face a little, because Eames winces and looks away again.  
He doesn’t know why he’s not shaking more visibly. His body feels like a live wire.

“No, the job’s done,” Eames admits. “It was clean, in the end.” Arthur doesn’t miss his hesitation.

“Then why are you _here_?” he snaps, because it’s not any one of the things he really wants to ask instead.

“Well, we did have an arrangement to meet after my last job,” Eames says. “Plus, I had to give you your present.”

Arthur shifts and slides the package off his lap. It slips to the side and he flicks it off the mattress. Doesn’t see where it lands. Twists his trousers off as he slips under the covers, kicks them to the floor, turns out the light next to the bed.

“Ah,” says Eames. “It’s a silly present anyway.”

Arthur goes to sleep.

 

*

 

He wakes at 5 am sharp and lies there for a while, listening to Eames’ light snoring across the room, wondering if he should take off. Well, no: he knows unquestionably he _should_ take off, but if Eames really does need something from Arthur, whatever it is, then Arthur doesn’t have the indecency to make him pay for gas when they could just take one car down to Atlanta.

He gets up, eventually, and tugs on his trousers. It’s just past dawn, and he’s only planning to slip out to the motel lounge for whatever crappy commercial brand passes for real coffee in this part of the world, but when he slips outside, the crisp chill of the mountain air hits him, and Arthur thinks: what the hell. I did say I’d SEE ROCK CITY.

In Arthur’s experience Eames can sleep through anything when he wants to, so he doesn’t try particularly hard not to wake him, which is a mistake since when he steps out of the shower after fetching his coffee (black, one sugar, Folgers lite, which Arthur’s only drinking out of a need to have some sort of tangible manifestation of the degree to which he hates his life right now) Eames is sitting on the edge of the cot, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Arthur tries not to drink in the sight of him, but despite the anger still churning his stomach there’s something unquestionably comforting about having him here, safe and whole and sound. He takes a long sip of coffee and looks away when Eames blinks awake enough to focus on him. His glance slides over Arthur and away; there’s no presumption of a tacit permission to linger, not now. It’s different enough that Arthur feels irrationally bitter, and he goes back into the bathroom to tug on his shirt and pants. Eames is brushing his teeth when he emerges again. Arthur grabs his keys, his wallet, his diamondback and two extra mags, and leaves without a word.

Eames knows where he keeps the other guns if he needs them.

 

*

It’s still too early for visitors and the park’s closed, so Arthur nurses a cup of coffee at the diner across the street from the park entrance until he’s skirting the bounds of politeness and his waitress is casting him odd looks. He draws mazes on the placemats and thinks about the kind of job he’ll be running in Atlanta—nothing fancy, just a one-level dream, extracting the plans for a rural highway project from an unmilitarized subconscious. The same sort of job he’s been running for months, because he’d been unable to accept that he wasn’t still waiting for Eames. When he’s tired of thinking about the job, he draws Penrose steps and Navidson Houses and Escher illusions, and what could be a crude copy of a small Rubens. When he’s through, he tips his waitress a twenty (for keeping his coffee topped off and leaving him alone) and picks a tourist brochure up from the diner as he’s leaving. 

Compared to other places Arthur’s been and other rocks he’s stood on, Lookout Mountain is an infant, only about 200 million years old—or so the brochure informs him. As far as mountains go, it’s like most of the Appalachians: on the hilly side, smooth and serene and undramatic.

But Arthur doesn’t mind. As tourist traps go, it could be a lot worse, especially this early in the morning when the air is still cool and the shade is abundant. The rocks themselves are mostly shale and limestone, sandstone and quartz—nothing special along the geologic spectrum, but also boring and sturdy, nothing you could easily fall from or get pushed off of.

The most impressive part of Rock City is called Lover’s Leap: it’s a tall, magnificent waterfall plunging dramatically over a cliff into a lagoon. Arthur kneels at the edge of the walkway and draws the view in his moleskine. He’s not the greatest artist, but he likes this better than photographs. He sketches brief impressions of the few tourists who are up and about this early. He realizes halfway through sketching a family of four that he’s trying to see them the way Eames would see them, trying to capture something about their mannerisms, the little details only a forger would notice. The thought makes his anger spark all over again; but _Eames is alive, Eames is alive_ , and something loosens in his chest as he draws. 

It makes him smile at the small group of tourists huddled around the ‘Seven States’ marker. “That’s actually factually inaccurate,” he tells them. “Even if the human eye could see that far, the natural curvature of the earth would prevent us from seeing all the way to Kentucky or Virginia.”

They stare at him.

“So do we get a refund?” A woman with fat binoculars and a fanny pack asks him in a midwestern drawl.

“I think you pay for the sense of whimsy and not topographical accuracy,” he says.

They seem unconvinced.

He finds a shady spot and an unoccupied bench. He draws more mazes in his moleskine. Then he catalogues the number of minerals he can see at a glance. Then he brainstorms the number of potential ways they could use Eames on the job, because it never hurts to have a backup plan, and if Eames is really planning to come with Arthur, they might as well avail themselves of him.

Three months ago Arthur thought Eames was partner material. He tries to wrap his head around the fact that nothing has actually changed, at least on paper. In fact, thanks to tracking Eames’ paper trail for months, he has more factual evidence than ever before that Eames is fastidious, tidy, completely professional and more than able to handle himself. 

Nothing has changed. Everything has.

The thing is: Arthur hates rocks, has always hated rocks. He hates rocks so much that in sixth grade he spent six weeks pretending to have a dust allergy just to get out of doing hands-on work during the geology section of his science class. 

He used to like messing around in dirt as a kid—a byproduct of always being commandeered to help in his mother’s garden. He liked digging through dust and shale just to see what he can find. Then, when he was eight, he cut open his hand after he pried up a length of rusted chicken wire in his front yard. After the tetanus shots and stitches, his mom had taken him to the county courthouse for an old surveyor's map, which was how he learned that the wire came from a homestead built on the land they lived on, one that predated his own house by about sixty years. 

“Probably all kinds of artifacts buried under the ground around here,” his mother told him. “Let’s dig them up.” So they did. 

Along the way, Arthur got good and sick of rocks.

Most people look at rocks and see boring clusters of sediment. Arthur sees history, layers upon layers of history. He knows that what looks like a rock at first glance could be a petrified spool from a long-vanished sewing machine, or the tip of a long-buried curing hook. A fossil, or an arrowhead. A bone or a bullet. 

He hates rocks because they remind him of a childhood spent unearthing the details. They make him feel useless and swallowed whole, surrounded by details he’ll never fully pry beneath. He finds it frightening, the knowledge that the oldest rocks are older than the earth itself, formed when the earth was still particles of dust. 

The rocks he’s standing on at Lookout Mountain are over three billion years old. 

He tries to tell himself that if it took the earth three billion years to produce a mountain for him to stand on, he should at least be able to wait for what he wants. 

But Arthur was never a very patient person, and that was before Cobb got done with him.

Arthur’s not an idiot. He knows what he feels. He’s maybe less confused about his feelings right now than ever. But he’s so fucking angry he’s not even sure he can face Eames back at the motel, much less over the length of a job, much less to discuss a partnership. Or more.

Eames has always called on Arthur in a pinch, has always presumed he _could_ call on Arthur. If Eames couldn’t tell Arthur where he was for the last few months, then it means Arthur's idea of what they were building isn't what he thought it was. It means that Eames chose to deal with things himself, and Arthur can’t—he can’t deal with that. 

He gradually becomes aware of a figure in the distance, standing on the edge of Lover’s Leap, overlooking the cliff. He takes a moment before allowing himself to acknowledge that he can recognize Eames’ silhouette even after seven months apart, even at a glance. He doesn’t think Eames has seen him, but he knows Eames knows he’s here.

He watches. He can’t help but watch. Even as bedraggled and worn out as Arthur knows he is, the combination of grace and strength in Eames’ body is undeniable. It’s in his shoulders, his arms, his broad neck—the way he moves, effortless and feline despite his size. Arthur soaks up the deceptively awkward shuffle, the self-effacing way Eames draws the tourists into conversation and makes them smile, laugh, open up to him before they realize they’ve been completely disarmed. 

Arthur can see, even from this distance, the moment Eames decides not to pickpocket the tourists next to him, either because he’s feeling generous or because he’s decided it’s too easy. One moment he’s leaning in just a bit too close; the next he’s shifted his stance, slid his hands into his own pockets—morphed into a guileless tourist. 

For an instant grief and relief surge up in the place of the amusement Arthur feels. He looks away, angry at himself for watching, angrier at Eames for showing up here at all. And then, as if on cue, Eames turns from the view and sees him, and even from that distance, Arthur sees his shoulders unclench, sees him relax all over. 

Arthur should get up and leave before Eames can join him. But Eames is already wending his way through the crowd, up the cliff to Arthur’s bench. He doesn’t sit down next to Arthur. Instead he perches a little bit away on the edge of a sandstone shelf. Arthur doesn’t know whether it’s a favor to himself or not. He swallows the question along with all the others he refuses to ask. 

He knows this whole visit is an exercise in self-hatred, but Eames magically showing up makes him feel like a parody of himself. Now that the shock of seeing him has worn off, now that they're in broad daylight, Arthur can see how ragged Eames looks. Who the hell knows what he’s gone through. 

Every alternative makes Arthur feel sick. He should have tried harder, that night in Paris during the Fischer job, to convince Eames they were a good idea. He should have tried harder every day since.

He takes a breath. "I don't really like rocks," he says. 

Eames stares at him for a moment and then lets out a raspy laugh. “You’ll have to forgive me, Arthur,” he says. His voice is light in precisely that way that Arthur knows means he’s actually being utterly serious. “I seem to have missed a line or two along the way.”

Arthur shifts and doesn’t look over at him. 

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Eames says, “but we didn’t exactly leave things settled after the Fischer job, yeah? I didn’t actually enter into some kind of arrangement with you, Arthur. We weren’t partners. I didn’t owe you any kind of explanation. I’ve apologized for missing our appointment, but unless I’m very much out of step, I’m not the one of us who needs to explain what he’s thinking.”

“I bought new swim trunks,” says Arthur coolly. “I packed light.”

“Well,” says Eames. “S’what you get for ever trusting a thief to be predictable.”

“Fuck you,” says Arthur. “Don’t do that, don’t act like this didn’t mean anything. Don’t act like we weren’t—like we didn’t—”

“Like we didn’t what?” Eames says, staring at him openly now. “We weren’t anything, were we? You saw to that the night you found out what Cobb really was and still went back to him after fucking me.”

“I didn’t _go back_ to him,” Arthur seethes, “We were never together. And it was a lousy fuck.” 

“The end of it was, yeah,” Eames says nastily, and Arthur is, for a moment, relieved beneath all his simmering anger that Eames isn’t going to pin Arthur down on saying that, because he didn’t mean it, and the idea of it hurting Eames on top of everything hurtful he’s already done makes him go cold inside.

“Then why are you _here_?” he snaps. “You don’t want to tell me what happened, where you went, fine. _Fine._ But when your first move after reappearing on the grid after twelve weeks is to hop on a plane and charter a fucking Cessna to show up in the freaking Cumberland mountains at my hotel room less than 24 hours later, it kind of makes me think maybe we were something after all, or trying to be. At the very least, it feels a little like my fucking business.” He wishes he smoked so he could scrounge angrily in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes or something to keep his hands busy. He winds up digging his die out instead, rolling it irritably between his fingers.

Eames doesn’t reply at first. Instead he sighs. When Arthur reluctantly glances over at him he’s sitting with his hands in his pockets, watching Arthur with a pensive expression.

“I stood you up,” he says at last. “What if I said I just wanted to see you?”

Arthur stands up. “Here I am,” he says, and leaves the park.

 

*

Arthur heads back to the diner, orders more coffee, and leaves the waitress another twenty. By the time he gets back to the motel room, Eames has made himself at home. He’s ordered pizza—Arthur doesn’t know where he picked up that Arthur likes mushrooms on his half, but he’s clearly been paying attention—and is sprawled out on the bed watching _Adventure Time_ on his laptop. Arthur stands in the doorway watching him for a moment, then kicks off his shoes, sighs, and slides onto the bed next to him. “Long way to fly just to watch Cartoon Network,” he tries.

Eames settles back against the pillows he’s propped up against the headboard and closes his laptop. “Talked to a few people while you were out,” he says. “I appreciate that you tried to find me. I’m still finding traces popping up on the accounts you were dogging.”

Arthur shrugs, lifts an eyebrow, says nothing. Eames squirms. “I’m not dead, Arthur,” he says. He reaches over and rests a hand on Arthur’s forearm, the touch tentative. “See?”

Arthur wants to lean into him. After a moment he sighs, and it feels like the first time he's exhaled since December, since Eames fell off the map. Eames pulls his hand away and Arthur feels its absence.

Eames runs his hand over his jaw. “I realize there’s not really room for a fourth on the job in Atlanta,” he says. “But if you’re going my way, maybe you could at least give me a lift to the airport.”

Arthur grimaces, shakes his head again. He wishes they were already in Atlanta so they could be having this conversation in a decent hotel instead of a dingy motel room whose duvet Arthur should probably place a towel over or something. “I don’t—” he bites his lip and finally just gives up and slides his hand over Eames’ thigh. Eames draws in a sharp breath, goes rigid beneath Arthur’s palm, and then breathes out again, slowly relaxing. “Look, if you tell me you flew across the world and you weren’t hoping to at least get a blow job out of it, I’ll have to rethink my opinion of you as a shameless opportunist, and I’m not sure you could handle the blow to your ego.” 

Eames laughs, shaky and a little too quick. He touches the side of Arthur’s face, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth for Arthur not to let himself turn into the touch. Eames’ palm is warm and rough, and Arthur’s stomach clenches.

“You mean you’re actually considering a fuck in a seedy motel?” Eames says. He sounds sad and fond. “You must really have missed me.”

I did, Arthur thinks. Goddammit. “Maybe I save the expensive hotel fucks for the assholes who don’t lie to me.”

“I never lied to you,” Eames says, thumbing his temple. “Never that.” He shifts and tugs Arthur closer by his elbow, til Arthur is perched awkwardly against the headboard, listing into Eames' side.

He pulls Arthur close, cupping his jaw and tugging him forward until he’s carrying most of Arthur’s weight that isn’t sagging against the flimsy mattress frame. Arthur closes his eyes when Eames kisses him. His mouth is big and his lips are chapped and he kisses Arthur like he’s been thinking about it for ages, just like Arthur remembers from all those months ago. The kiss is stale, like all Eames’ hours of travel have yet to fade away, but Arthur presses close anyway, hungry and urgent and grateful for the strength of Eames’ arms where they tighten around him, firm and warm, alive, alive.

He breaks away when his lips start to buzz and pushes himself upright at last. 

“So you didn’t know you were about to drop off the map when you invited me to Mombasa?” Arthur says warily. “You didn’t just use me as the setup to make it clear you were gone?”

Eames’ eyes flash. “No,” he says. “Arthur, _no._ Jesus christ, is that what you’ve thought all this time? Fuck.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Fuck Cobb,” he says, with vehemence. Arthur isn’t about to ask what he means. He leans in a little more and skates his fingers over Eames' inseam. 

"I didn't have any idea, and the last thing I would ever do is use you as a way to convince the community I was well and truly dead, especially since, as you'll have noticed, I'm not bloody dead, am I?" He sits back and huffs. "Christ, Arthur, your low expectations will be the death of me." He says it without heat, as if he's just resigned to Arthur thinking the worst of him.

Arthur draws in a shaky breath. Words catch in his throat, words about how if anyone could yank Arthur out of the perpetually disappointed state Cobb left him in, it would be Eames; or so he would have said before Eames died and came back to life. 

He doesn't say that he's given Eames more chances than anyone else besides Cobb to defy his expectations. He doesn't say how often Eames has surprised him. He feels caught in-between his shaky knowledge of what he thought they were building and whatever the truth actually is. Maybe the answer is nothing, nothing at all. 

He can't speak; so he moves his hand and traces the firm line of Eames' forearm down to his wrist. He encircles it there with his fingers, and after another moment Eames draws him close, kissing him slowly, the pressure gentle against Arthur's lips. Arthur doesn't move, but he tightens his grip on Eames' wrist.

Eames kisses him a few moments more, then rests his forehead against Arthur's. "Look," he says. "We're only two hours away from a real bed and a shower that actually has hot water so can we just get to Atlanta and regroup? I'll tell you everything I can."

Arthur thinks about how Eames could have just met him in Atlanta. Three months, and the first thing he'd done was come find Arthur. As though waiting the extra day for Arthur to show up in Atlanta was unbearable. 

"Three hours," he says, pressing his lips against Eames' again for a brief moment. 

"Hmm?" Eames cups his jaw again, curls his fingers over the hair at the base of Arthur's neck. 

"Assuming you'll want to buy fireworks at the state line," Arthur says. He keeps his voice dry, but the concession is obvious. 

Eames blinks, then smiles, delighted, and Arthur thinks: goddammit.

*

Eames insists on stopping at the biggest, gaudiest fireworks barn along the Tennessee-Georgia border, the one with stadium lights that cast a glow half a mile down the interstate and a giant billboard reminding visitors that Jesus saves up to 75% off selected candles. 

Eames buys an assortment of tall Roman candles, bottle rockets, fountain cones, firecrackers, and increasingly elaborate, expensive displays that Arthur would have gone nuts for as a kid. He piles them into the trunk of Arthur's rental next to the PASIV and Arthur's present, still rattling around in its war-torn wrapping. Then he sits quietly, content to stare out the window at the monotony of the interstate and the easy slope of the Appalachian foothills around them. 

After they pass what Arthur deems to be the rough halfway point, he lets Eames drive. Eames obliges, and the journey lulls them into something like a companionable silence, enough for Arthur to ask at last, "Do you have any idea where you'll shoot them off?"

Eames grins and shoots Arthur a fond look, like he's thinking that of all the questions Arthur could conceivably have asked with two hours alone in a car together, this is the most amusing and also the most Arthurish. Arthur feels himself scowling.

“Now that you mention it,” Eames says, “it's redneck country. Let’s go exploring. We should be able to find a spare field somewhere." He finds a convenient exit just as he finishes the thought, one lone gas station by the interstate and no sign of anything else but dirt and deer in either direction.

“I’m not helping you if you get shot for trespassing,” Arthur says stiffly, but he turns on the rental GPS all the same.

Eames smiles and turns the car down a promising looking side road. “Aha,” he says. “Apparently we’re near something called Goat Road.”

“Perfect,” says Arthur, full of sarcasm.

“Indeed,” says Eames, full of sincerity.

They find Goat Road and then Eames manages to find the perfect field, not too damp despite the recent rains or the mid-March chill, and not too near civilization. Eames grabs his fireworks haul and bids Arthur to come along, like he’s content to bask in Arthur’s anger, like he’s just fine with all of it, like all he wants is to just—to just _be_ here, with Arthur. Cold twists in Arthur’s gut, but he grabs the handful of leftover Roman candles Eames couldn’t carry and joins him in the middle of the field.

Dusk is rapidly approaching twilight by the time they’ve set off the first round of fireworks. Arthur’s getting chilly, but there’s enough light still to catch the glee on Eames’ face when he watches them ignite, and Arthur isn’t about to wait in the car.

“I know we didn’t have a partnership,” he says, as Eames is setting up a fountain cone. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to sound like when you try to say something important like this, but it’s probably not sullen and brittle like this. “When I got to Mombasa, I was going to ask you if—if maybe you wanted to partner up. Maybe run a few jobs together, you as extractor.”

Eames lights the cone, which hisses and begins shooting a waterfall of sparks, low to the ground but still beautiful. “And now?” he asks, not looking away from the cone. His voice is even.

Arthur shakes his head. “I don’t know.” It’s only part of the truth, but it’s the closest he can come to articulating the sharp mix of anger and relief and want still warring in his chest whenever he looks at Eames. Before them, the cone spews pink, then purple, then blue, then green, and finally a last shower of blazing white.

Eames sighs, deep and heavy. “I know you’re upset and angry, Arthur, and god knows I’m not an extractor—or—maybe—” he cuts himself off and frowns, face reddening. “I’m not Cobb. I never wanted to lead the jobs. And I don’t need you to be my own personal yes man. I don’t _want_ that from you, do you understand? But I—” He fiddles with the lighter he’s been using on the fireworks, working it between his fingers. “If you wanted—if you still wanted to, then I’d want us to do it together. Equal partnership across the board.”

Arthur swallows. To distract himself he goes to the fireworks pile and picks up two sparklers. He lights one and offers it to Eames.

“I didn’t know you bought these,” Eames says.

“Tradition,” Arthur says simply, because it is. He lights the other, and Eames touches the two of them together. Then he waves it in front of him, a trail of red to ward off the rapidly falling night. Arthur holds his still, listening to the hiss it makes against the sounds of early spring—the crickets, the whippoorwills, a solitary bull frog somewhere nearby, Eames’ low rumble of laughter.

“Cobb never offered you full partnership, did he,” Eames says, with a mildness that belies the way he’s clenched his fist around the sparkler. “What an unbelievable, undeserving prick.”

“Cobb would have told me where he was going,” Arthur says, because he can’t help himself.

“Just like he told you he was leading you into Limbo,” Eames says, terse, and the silence Arthur gives him in response lasts until they set off a series of fireworks that turn out to form the shape of various animals. Arthur can only stay so mad when there’s a giant glowing panda overhead. Not when it makes Eames’ face light up brighter than the fourth of July.

 

They get into Atlanta an hour or so later. It probably says something unpleasant that Arthur is more at home in an impersonal hotel than he ever was in the house he grew up in, with its cosy wallpaper and warm rooms, the cheerful blue shutters and white paint, the front porch out front and the garden out back. He was always a little too aloof for his surroundings. When he stays in Atlanta he usually books the Hyatt because he likes the sleek architecture, the open, minimalist lobby. Plus, the hotel restaurant has excellent sweet tea. Eames hates sweet tea, which is just a bonus.

He gets a suite for both of them and calls Dewa while Eames is finally getting his real shower. "I heard," she says when he tells her Eames is back. "Yusuf sent me a text. Any idea where he's been?"

"Personal emergency," Arthur says, unsure why he's covering for him. It's the kind of thing he used to do for Cobb. 

"Well, if he wants to tag along on this job he can, but it comes out of your cut."

"Why mine?"

"Why not? Won't he just be spending it on you anyway?"

She seems to take his silence in response as confirmation rather than dismay. 

When he's off the phone he joins Eames, who's standing by the window, freshly shaven and clad in a voluminous hotel bathrobe, looking pensively out over downtown Atlanta. 

"You're in, and you owe me," Arthur says.

Eames hums. "Don't I just." He falls silent, and Arthur waits. Eventually, Eames stretches, too casually, and says, “That shower was heavenly. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just nip off for a cat nap.”

“You said you were going to tell me what happened,” Arthur says. “When we got to a real hotel.”

Eames frowns. Arthur spreads his hands. “If you’re waiting for the Plaza, I have to tell you this is as good as Atlanta gets,” he says. “You want me to order you a pair of hookers and a masseuse to loosen you up?”

Eames doesn’t rise to the bait. He sighs and sits down on the couch. He looks older all at once, and Arthur suddenly has a sharp vision of Eames as he’ll be in ten, fifteen years—brow even more furrowed, laugh lines even more pronounced, smile just as wide and toothy and irresistible as ever. The thought makes Arthur feel bereft, makes him want to hold on to whatever part of Eames he can, for as long as he can.

He thinks, _we’ll never make it to ten, fifteen years, not unless we do it together_ —and closes his eyes. 

“Look, I tried to find you,” he said. “I did everything—I looked, Eames. I _looked_ for you.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Eames sounds tired. “I’m grateful, Arthur, you know I am.”

“Then tell me why I couldn’t—why I couldn’t find you,” Arthur says roughly. “If this happens again—”

“It’s not going to happen again,” Eames says. His voice carries a certain conviction. “I got careless—distracted.” He glances up at Arthur, then away. “You really should open your present, you know. I had picked it up that morning.”

“I know,” Arthur says. “I traced the security footage. And the auction receipts. While I was trying to figure out whether you were still alive.”

Eames laughs without any humor. “Oh, well. Romance is dead, I suppose.”

“Where the fuck did you go, Eames?”

Eames bites his lower lip and Arthur, frustrated, settles onto the couch beside him. “If you want us to talk about a partnership—that can’t happen, not if I don’t know everything.”

Eames nods, still without looking at him. Just _tell_ me, Arthur thinks at him.

"To be honest,” Eames says at last, “I doubt very much you’ll believe any of this. I don’t know how much of it even makes sense. You ever heard of Jean-Wyatt Ashbrook?”

Arthur sits up straighter. “No,” he says, “No, it couldn’t be him, he was one of the first people I checked out. I found a line on some conference he attended nearby and pulled logs on his hotel stay in Réunion just in case anything panned out. He had no connections to you and checked out three days before you went missing. He flew back to Port-au-Prince.”

Eames grimaces. “His _luggage_ flew back, possibly, but Ashbrook checked out of his hotel and got on a boat. The _Santa Lucia_. Parked it in the middle of the Indian Ocean. No wi-fi, no cell service, just a radio and an on-board security system.”

Arthur stares. “What, you’re saying he kidnapped you?”

“His personal assistant assisted me aboard ship,” Eames says. His tone is deliberately light. Arthur doesn’t like where any of this is going.

“He’s in fucking futures, why would he—why?”

Eames laughs. “Because, dear Arthur, he’d just found out his son liked to fuck other men, and he just happened to be within a half-mile radius of a man who’d performed Inception.”

“What the fuck,” Arthur says. “Fuck. What did he do?” He’s moved closer before he can help it. “Eames, what did he make you do?” 

He sounds panicked, he realizes distantly, and Eames says, “It’s all right, Arthur, it’s fine, everything’s fine.” He reaches for Arthur and leans in as if he wants to reassure him, but somehow he winds up gripping Arthur’s shoulder, breathing in deep. 

“He had Inception,” he says. “He knew who was on team—he even had Ariadne’s name and I have no idea how he got it unless he had connections within Proclus. They threatened to float the names of all the team members unless I came with them.” 

“Jesus.” 

“I was on that bloody ship with no way to reach you or anyone else, and Ashbrook was going to dump my body overboard if I couldn’t de-gay his only son and heir. Two fucking months, Arthur, I didn’t know—I just kept stalling, trying to convince him Inception was an intricate process that you needed time to plan. We were too far out to swim for it, and that yacht had enough provisions to last another three months, easy, without making port. Every day I thought I was dead.”

“He had a PASIV?” Arthur says. Eames nods. He’s shivering a little, and Arthur is, too, from cold and unhappiness and from the terrifying thought that Eames was all alone without him and Arthur might never have known. He slides his arm around Eames’ back. 

“PASIV, Somnacin—he’d done his research, but somehow he’d gotten the impression that I’d done the Inception all on my own without help from the rest of the team, and I couldn’t convince him it couldn’t be done with just one person. He just wanted his son magically cured. I didn’t know what else to do. Six weeks in, I had to say I was ready to try it, so he got his son and his son’s partner to join us and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, and they were instantly suspicious and I was running out of time. So I finally just fucking got Ashbrook to come along on a test run, drugged him, and then took him under another level. If he’d been militarized I’d be dead.”

Arthur’s fingers have been tracing circles against Eames’ shoulder, and now they go still. “Did you...?”

Eames closes his eyes. “I forged his son, told him I was happy and just wanted to make him proud. Then took him under another level and forged his dead wife. Son’s mother. Told him how happy she was that her son was happy and could finally appreciate himself. Told him this was what we’d always wanted. Begged him to let the whole idea go.” He sucks in a breath. “Christ, it was so grey down there. He forged some kind of old memory, I think it was their first date. I was going off a single photo of her he had on his nightstand, I just had no fucking idea what I was doing.”

“Did it work?”

“Of course it didn’t fucking work,” Eames says, his voice gone jittery. “But he didn’t remember anything when he woke up, so I waited a week and tried again, and this time—this time he projected a wedding ring on the third level, onto his wife’s finger. And I had this idea to have her give him the ring, order him to pass it on to their son and his partner.” He breathes out. “And I woke up and I had no idea if it had taken, and then three days went by, and then suddenly he calls me in and tells me the job’s off and he’s changed his mind and he’s dropping me off tomorrow morning at Saint-Denis. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I thought even if the inception did take he’d figure it out and decide he wanted me dead. But by that time he was distracted with planning his son’s wedding, and, Christ, I thought he was practically going to force me to be the best man before it was all over. I’m still... I don’t know what to tell you, Arthur, I got out by the skin of my teeth. I spent two weeks in hiding, waiting for him to realize what happened and out the whole bloody team, waiting for—I don’t even know what. Instead he sends me a bonus and a fucking wedding invite. Jesus.”

“Fuck,” Arthur says. “Eames.” His mind is blank, a giant space full of fear and possessiveness and protectiveness where Eames almost wasn’t. “You have to tell Saito,” he says.

Eames laughs. “First phone call I made, trust me,” he says. “He’s going to drop in on the wedding and congratulate the happy couple in no uncertain terms. I told you it was clean, Arthur. I meant it.”

 _Thank god,_ Arthur thinks. “You still have to tell Ariadne,” Arthur says. “She needs to know. They all do.” 

“I’ve contacted Yusuf. He knows what happened, he’ll tell the others.” Eames sighs and leans his head back against the sofa. “I know we didn’t leave things easy,” he says. His voice is earnest and raw and so are his eyes and Arthur almost can’t stand it. “All I wanted to do when I was safe again was see you. He could wake up any day and realize he’s been incepted and if he comes after me, I can't guarantee he won't try to take you, all of you, down with me, Saito or no Saito. But I—I just needed—”

And Arthur can’t take it anymore, can’t take any of it, the worry, the fear, the not having Eames, not touching him, not holding him the way he wants. He leans in and kisses him, open-mouthed and urgent. “I missed you,” he says against Eames’ mouth. “Every day I missed you. Fuck.” Eames crowds against him, hands at Arthur’s shoulders and then holding him, one at his side and one thumbing the pulse point at his neck. 

“I know I fucked everything up,” he says in between kisses. Arthur makes a vague sound of protest.

“You pulled off a _single-person inception_ under duress,” he says. “How do you even—god, will you shut up.” He bites down on Eames’ plush lower lip to emphasize the final part of that thought and then curls his tongue into Eames’ mouth. Eames lets out a soft gasp and then pulls back long enough to look at Arthur, his pupils blown and his mouth irresistibly swollen.

“I don’t want this if it’s just because we’re both—I don’t know, emotional or in need of reassurance,” he says. “We’ve got to stop fucking meeting like this.”

“It’s not,” Arthur says. “It’s never been.” He skates his fingers over Eames’ lips. “In New York I almost—it was easier not to. I don’t do well when I—when I’m wrong about someone. And I didn’t want to be wrong about this.”

“If I could have warned you in time,” Eames says, “I _would_ have, Arthur, I wouldn’t have left you in the dark. I wouldn’t have just left you like that if I’d had any idea—”

“Stop it,” Arthur says. “Stop, just stop, you’re fine, we’re okay.” And then he kisses Eames again, letting himself put the message into the kiss. He’s thought about kissing Eames like this, with too many teeth and a desperate edge, both of them clinging a little too hard to each other. He used to think Eames would be all casual touches and light laughter in bed, but Eames is intense, focused, almost heartbreakingly sincere where he dips to press his lips beneath Arthur’s jaw line. 

And a part of Arthur has always known that the flippancy was only ever artifice; but now he knows the way Eames' breath catches in his throat when Arthur strokes the back of his neck. He knows the way Eames bites his lip to suppress a hiss of pleasure when Arthur snakes his hand beneath Eames' shirt to palm the smooth muscles of his abdomen. "I've thought about this a lot," he murmurs, groping lower, finding Eames already half-hard for him.

"Have you," Eames grins against the hollow of Arthur's throat.

"No more than reason," Arthur admits, and Eames laughs, pulling him to his feet and into the bedroom.

*

In the morning Arthur wakes up gradually, adjusting to the pleasant suffocation of Eames' arm wrapped around him where they lie together, his warmth pressed all along Arthur's back. He's breathing softly into Arthur's neck and Arthur's stomach does a slow silly rollover at the intimacy of it all. He contemplates waking Eames up for hazy half-slurred morning sex, but it's early yet and they aren't meeting Dewa till the afternoon. Eames is most likely still jet-lagged; Arthur lets him sleep. 

He spends some time, though, just lying still, his fingers moving slowly over the stretch of Eames' forearm that he has easy access to. So this is how it feels, he thinks, to want someone without feeling empty. It's a ridiculous notion but he can't stop thinking it, marveling at it: he has Eames and it doesn't feel awful. He has Eames and he's kind of confident it might not even be a one-off. 

He has Eames and it doesn't really even hurt at all. 

When Eames finally wakes up, Arthur has ordered room service and is sitting in bed beside him, playing with his present. Well. As much as he can play with a large rock.

“Best part is, it’s not even illegal,” Eames says, yawning. “Came from the Russian expedition. Luna 16, to be exact.”

“You got me a moon rock,” Arthur says, beaming.

“At auction,” Eames says. “Which you already knew. You’re not supposed to look at the price tag, cheater.”

Arthur looks at him. “Are you asking me to be your Buffalo gal?”

“You want the moon, Arthur?” Eames says, painfully sincere. “Just say the word.”

And Arthur says—

“Eames.”

**Author's Note:**

> I originally started trying to write this fic in like 2012 as a pinch-hit for someone who had specifically asked their challenge writer to avoid "Cobb/Waiting." This broke my brain a lot and then I basically never completed the pinch-hit (someone else came through, don't worry) and promptly started writing Arthur-waiting-for-Cobb, ie the fic that eventually became this. Honestly, my main goal after exploring Arthur dealing with Cobb's Cobbness was just to write Arthur being incepted into seeing Rock City, because as someone who's made that drive many times, I know exactly how he feels. (I have yet to see Rock City, but having written this, I feel I can now make the drive guilt-free in the future.)
> 
> Oh! I have to thank the loveliest beta-readers, two-if-by-sea/seasquared and Weatherfront/16ruedelaverrerie, for tearing this to pieces years ago and making it 11000x better in the process, and then kindly reading it *again* when i came back 3 years later like "lol remember this." Friends. <3 They are the best. Oh, oh! and I also have to thank immoral_crow for reading it over this year and not hating it! Thank you! <3
> 
> Thanks for reading! Oh, and I'm [bookshop](http://bookshop.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. Come say hi!


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